The earliest known firearm was probably the fire lance which was invented in China. It used a primitive form of gunpowder with shrapnel inserted in a bamboo barrel. Eventually as improvements were made, the barrel became metal, the shrapnel was replaced with projectiles made to fit the barrel and the gunpowder was improved to maximize the explosive power. This allowed the gun to revolutionize weaponry and the sword and shield that had existed for thousands of years gave way to modern warfare.
Although these improvements allowed the gun to be more and more deadly, the firearms of the time had the major disadvantage of taking much longer than a sword to be ready for use again. Early attempts to overcome this were generally focused on multiple barrels which could be preloaded and fired in succession. This helped but also increased the weight and complexity of the gun and the weight increase limits the number of barrels you can reasonably use.
As improvements to ammunition came, the time required to place a new cartridge to be fired in a single barrel was reduced and improvements like the “repeating rifle” allowed multiple shots to be fired with very little time between reloading. In order to feed these new cartridges to the firearm, spring loaded magazines were provided that moved the cartridge into position. Today, most rifles and handguns (not revolvers) utilize a magazine with a clip that holds the ammunition and feeds it as needed. Generally this is done by using a spring of some kind to provide the biasing force to move the cartridge into a firing position within the barrel. In most firearms that use a magazine, it is necessary to load the magazine by pushing down on the biasing spring using the cartridges to be loaded. Because of this, it gets harder to push down as each cartridge is loaded. It can be difficult and awkward especially in high capacity magazines which can hold more than 10 rounds.
There is a need for a safe and easy to use magazine that allows the user to load the magazine without having to press down on the cartridges being loaded which makes further loading more difficult.